Rakuten Vanguard fund is not just VT

[adamu]

This is news to me.

Actually found out the mother fund is a mix of VT, VTI, and VXUS.

I guess they're taking advantage of VTI being much cheaper, and trying to do clever things with exchange rates to track the JPY rather than the USD index? Has this always been the case or did it change recently?

The SBI V fund does actually wrap up VT directly.

[TokyoWart]

This is news to me.

Actually found out the mother fund is a mix of VT, VOO, and VXUS.

I guess they're taking advantage of VOO being much cheaper, and trying to do clever things with exchange rates to track the JPY rather than the USD index? Has this always been the case or did it change recently?

The SBI V fund does actually wrap up VT directly.

This comes as a surprise to me because VT is "mostly" VOO + VXUS (I think it's actually VTI + VXUS but VTI is almost entirely VOO)

[adamu]

I think it's actually VTI + VXUS

Ah yes, you are right, I got the fund name wrong. I was thinking total stock market but I wrote S&P500. I've fixed the original post.

Same question though: why the manual split? As mentioned I suspect it's so they can lower costs, and try to more closely track the yen-denominated index.

[TokyoWart]

Same question though: why the manual split? As mentioned I suspect it's so they can lower costs, and try to more closely track the yen-denominated index.

I am not sure how it works for a Japanese "mother fund" but for US investors the problem with holding VT instead of VTI and VXUS as separate funds is that a little bit more than half of VT is US equities and that means you can't claim the foreign tax credit for non-US taxes subtracted on dividends paid within VT while you can claim that credit if you hold VTI and VXUS as separate funds.